Police secretary resigns from ‘hostile environment’

BY PATRICIA ROY SPECIAL TO THE LANDMARK

Nancy McKenzie said coworkers and selectmen created a “hostile work environment,” leading to her resignation Nov. 9 as police secretary.

In a letter to Police Chief Joseph Baril Jr., released at the Nov. 16 selectmen’s meeting, McKenzie said she struggled with the work environment for months, claiming that hostility towards her reached a peak in late September, when a “private conversation with an officer” was related by the officer to a dispatcher. Neither the officer nor the dispatcher was named in McKenzie’s letter.

According to McKenzie, that was the first in a series of conversations that ran like a child’s game of telephone, involving officers, dispatchers and selectmen.

When contacted about the letter Tuesday, Dibb said she had “no idea what to think right now. I’m speechless.”

Baril also had no comment on the matter. A call to McKenzie’s home was not returned by press time.

McKenzie was employed at the Police Department for four and a half years.

In the letter, McKenzie went on to claim that Dibb came into the Public Safety Build ing, demanding that Baril reprimand McKenzie for her remarks. Dibb never revealed the person who repeated the remarks to her, McKenzie wrote in her letter.

“Selectman Dibb threatened me that afternoon and said, ‘Nancy, you thought I was the problem. You wait. You are the problem!’” McKenzie wrote.

The chief did issue a verbal reprimand to McKenzie that day, according to the letter.

When McKenzie later met with select board Chairman Leroy “Skip” Clark and selectman Joseph Becker to complain about the run-in, her complaint “fell on deaf ears,” she wrote.

“The very next selectmen[’s] meeting they announced they would discuss the chief’s appointment at the next meeting on Oct. 19, 2009. And we all know the result of that lynching,” McKenzie wrote.

At that meeting, selectmen voted not to reappoint the chief when his term is up on June 30, 2010. He has worked for the town for nearly 12 years.